Iraqis go to the polls today, 15 December 2005, in elections that will determine the makeup of the next parliament. According to the country’s new constitution – agreed after tortuous negotiations that ended on 12 October 2005, and ratified in a referendum three days later – the first task of the new parliament will be to elect a president, who will in turn be charged with appointing the prime minister from the largest bloc within parliament.
The constitution provides that the government led by this prime minister could stay in power for four years. This explains why so many Iraqi voters, politicians and political commentators consider that today’s elections are more important than any other that have taken place since 2003 – including those to a national assembly in January 2005 and the referendum on the constitution in October.
What is at stake?
The conditions surrounding the Iraqi election have three notable features.
First, the situation in much of the country has remained desperate throughout 2005: security in Baghdad is often catastrophic, access to electricity and water is infrequent at best, and the economy is yet to recover from the meltdown caused by the sanction years and the invasion in 2003. Thus, political debate in the country focuses not on issues such as education or health reform, but almost entirely on matters relating to security, corruption and unemployment.
In addition, because of the failure of the state and the occupation authorities’ need to instill a sense of trust and security in the population as a whole, Iraqis have retreated to more traditional centres of authority and identity, such as religion, and ethnic and tribal groupings.
Candidates in the current elections have either touted their experience in dealing with issues like security, or have simply been counting on demographics to get them seats in parliament. However, politicians who have already had a stab at government in the new Iraq cannot truly count on past achievements as a means to return them to power.
The current government, headed by a coalition between the Shi’a-dominated United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) and the Kurdish alliance, cannot be said to have improved the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Most observers agree that the UIA’s poor performance in government this year – its failure to improve security, its inability to prevent social services from deteriorating, and its reliance on sectarian politics and militias – has damaged its appeal to Iraqi voters. Although Iyad Allawi – Iraq’s interim prime minister during the second half of 2004, and leader of the Iraqi National Accord – is certainly not remembered for his competent administration of the country, he is likely to pick up votes merely because of his non-sectarian stance and because of the fact that he is not associated with a militia.
Second, the issue of federalism as provided for in the new Iraqi constitution creates a mechanism allowing any number of Iraq’s governorates to join together in order to form a region, and any such region will enjoy a great degree of independence from the central government in Baghdad. A large number of Iraqis have interpreted this mechanism as a formula for the potential dissolution of the Iraqi state. Although many of the country’s political parties appear to share similar views on other policy areas, they do disagree fundamentally on the question of the federal model and its future. As a result, Iraqis have a real choice on this very important matter.
Third, Sunni voters have decided to end their boycott of the political process. Iraq’s Sunni community has long argued that it has been one of the main victims of the current government’s tenure. Throughout 2005, a number of cities in the defiant Anbar governorate were reduced to rubble, and this has prompted a change of tactics within the community.
Most Sunni leaders regarded the two previous elections in 2005 as illegitimate, insofar as they were carried out under conditions of American military occupation. Today, most Sunnis accept that the proper approach is to take part in the elections in order to prevent the current government from returning to power. It remains to be seen, however, whether the Sunnis’ confused and poorly organised parties can muster enough votes to achieve that objective.
A dirty tricks election
A consistent element in Iraq’s elections since 2003 is the use of anti-democratic tactics by all parties involved. In 2005, the independent electoral commission of Iraq issued a code of conduct for political entities and coalitions. This provides that parties must “strive to achieve full transparency in political finances and expenditures”, refrain from “publishing inflammatory allegations about opponents”, and cannot “have or be associated with an armed force, militia or residual element”. It is hard to think of a political party running for elections today that hasn’t violated at least one of these rules on a continual basis.
Over the past few days, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, the Arab world’s most popular satellite news channels, have been running so many adverts by Iraqi politicians that one would think that they are in fact exclusively Iraqi channels. Where does the money for these expensive productions come from? The wild rumours have been circulating that funds have been flowing into the country from Iran, the Gulf states and the United States cannot be confirmed as campaign finances are simply not recorded or regulated.
Yet there is no doubt that foreign elements are involved in the Iraqi electoral process. On 13 December, Iraqi police seized thousands of forged ballots that were on their way to Iraqi cities from Iran, and apparently thousands more managed to reach their final destination; but the situation is so out of control that electoral officials seem to have accepted this interference as part of the status quo.
In addition, inflammatory comments as well as dishonest tactics and threats continue to flavour the campaign. United Iraqi Alliance activists have been placing two posters throughout Iraq featuring Iyad Allawi’s and Saddam Hussein’s face side-by-side; one caption reads “Ba’athist”, the other reads “Does this man remind you of someone?”
Violence has also been a staple feature of the campaign. In a single day, there were coordinated arson attacks on hundreds of the Kurdish Islamic Union’s offices, and several of its members were killed. The union complained of an organised campaign of violence and intimidation by the Kurdish region’s leading parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), but nothing has come of it. Members of other political parties have also been killed, their campaigners threatened and harassed, party offices burned to the ground and campaigning material destroyed. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, a leading UIA official, has threatened that if the Ba’ath party (read: Iyad Allawi) returns to power, his party will take up arms.
One of the few advantages that the invasion in 2003 brought was an opening up of Iraq to the outside world, after so many years of having been shut away by Saddam Hussein and by the murderous sanctions regime that was imposed by the international community. Although this has allowed Iraqis to take advantage of and learn from international best practices in many fields, many appear to have resorted to their worst instincts during the election campaign. Perhaps all we Iraqis and non-Iraqis alike can hope for is that the elections will bring relative peace for the Iraqi public – and that future electoral campaigns will prove more civilised.